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Why are western media and people so infatuated with Japan? They admire it from far but as soon as they land in Japan, they criticize it. Japan works for Japan,

• i_am_proteus 4y ago
  For some people, the existence of a parallel system with significant differences that works very well for the people who live in it is the source of fascination.
  • astrange 4y ago
    Don't think much evidence is provided that it's working very well for them. Certainly it worked better in the 80s. Having to work with low pay to support a giant population of elderly people is not a great economic position.
    • Danieru 4y ago
      > Certainly it worked better in the 80s. This is such an American/Chinese perspective. Both countries where the growth and promising future gets people excited. You are being dazzled by the growth and bubble. Bubble era Japan indeed had that same appeal. In 1980s Japan young families were worried about ever being able to afford homes. Land and houses had been exploding in price since the 1970s. Yes everyone felt they were getting rich, but assets went up in price faster than wages. Japan now is indeed the anti-thesis to the bubble era you are glamourizing yes. Now homes are affordable. Jobs plentiful. Overtime has decreased massively. The 1980s had overtime common which would be illegal now. Train lines are plentiful. The bullet train network built, and paid for. You can get a taxi ride at anytime without the need to bribe drivers. The flash and dazzle of the bubble was fake. The practical affordability and livability of Japan now is real.
      • ThrowawayR2 4y ago
        > "The 1980s had overtime common which would be illegal now." Despite being illegal, it's seemingly still quite common: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_company_(Japanese_term) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_company_(Japanese_term)
        • japanesedea 4y ago
          Well, can you ever really solve societal ills like this or just move the needle? It’s not as if our war on drugs has solved the problem.
      • astrange 4y ago
        Japan somehow has an unemployment rate of 2.5% and barely any wage inflation. They do everything right, it's clean and safe, and yet they're time and money poor and earn less than the UK. Also I don't think the Shinkansen is doing that well atm… it's mostly for business trips, since it's pretty expensive to use, and those are down a lot since we all discovered Zoom calls.
        • Aeolun 4y ago
          The reason it’s so clean and safe is that everyone is paid so little. So many positions can be filled.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• namdnay 4y ago
  It doesn’t work that well for Japan. Having spent some time working there, the economic stagnation and inverting age pyramid really weigh on the younger generation. There’s a general feeling of decline that’s hard to put in words
  • stuckinthepast 4y ago
    Good job there's no feeling of decline in Western Europe Thanks to immigration, young generations have all they need and there's plenty of optimism
    • namdnay 4y ago
      Errrr no, there really isn’t? And yes, immigration has helped us keep relatively strong economies and filled positions that natives don’t want to do anymore
      • stuckinthepast 4y ago
        [flagged]
        • xwdv 4y ago
          Believe me, it doesn’t.
      • raffraffraff 4y ago
        I live in Western Europe and immigrants make up most of our bus drivers, trash collectors, store assistants, nurses, taxi drivers, builders and basically anybody who has repair skills (clothing, tech etc). Also, many of my colleagues in tech came to this country to work. So it's a mix, because immigrants also take jobs that the natives aren't qualified to do. And that's a good thing.
      • soulbleed 4y ago
        *Don't want to do for low wages anymore
• puppymaster 4y ago
  Preach. I was gonna click on comment and type the same thing. Stop trying to change Japan (by all means discuss it for all we want). The entire system, the one author referred to as 'traditional', is based on racial purism and while you and I are disgusted by it, they are perfectly fine with it. It sucks but it is their land and they don't try to enforce it outside their border.
  • another_story 4y ago
    Well, not in the last 80 years at least.
• causality0 4y ago
  How many "this is what's wrong with America" articles do you see on HN written by non-Americans? The compulsion to judge others is universal.
• rwmj 4y ago
  He's lived in Japan for a decade, been married and divorced to a Japanese national, has several kids there, and speaks Japanese pretty well.
• eska 4y ago
  I experienced it the opposite way. When they’re in Japan they love it (except for the bitter people who hang out at HUB every weekend who refuse to learn Japanese). It’s the ones who have never been there that talk shit the most.
• Hamuko 4y ago
  >Japan works for Japan The Japanese people that I follow on Japan seem pretty critical of Japan, so I'm not completely sure if Japan actually works for Japan.
  • hellisothers 4y ago
    I initially agreed with this sentiment but I’m pretty critical of the US yet would (mostly) accept the statement “the US (mostly) works for the US”. Otherwise probably nowhere works for everybody in the given nation.
    • Hamuko 4y ago
      I also wouldn't accept the statement that "the US works for the US" when the country has such differing opinions on where it needs to go that people, including elected politicians, are floating the idea of a "national divorce".
  • nullsense 4y ago
    It does and it doesn't. To them it's a trade-off and they're pretty aware of the upsides and the down. They really like the upsides and they all complain the downsides, but they kind of accept that to have the things they're really proud of as Japanese that in part stems from doing all the things that grind on them. One of the best examples of "Japan works for Japan, except when it doesn't" is the intersection of mental health and the Japanese way of solving problems. It's important to keep the peace with people, even if you're only pretending to, and that's a higher value than determining what's actually true in a given situation. So, whereas Western people try to get to the bottom of things and figure them out which requires ruffling some feathers, Japanese people very often simply ignore problems in the short term because it keeps the peace while accepting the long term outcome will blow up into a much bigger problem, but oh well because "there's nothing we can do about it". This kind of behavior is super perplexing as Westerner until you grok how it works on a fundamental level as you try to solve problems in a Western way and people wind up getting upset with you, though they often don't say it directly to you. The mental health situation there sucks because they don't know how to help family members who are experiencing difficulty, so the situation goes from bad to worse but of course "there's nothing we can do about it" and "there's no point talking about it" and this is the best thing to do even if it's all just to pretend everything is fine right. There's a reason they have hikikomori phenomenon. And sadly around half of those in mental hospitals could have avoided it if their family simply helped support them properly during their time of difficulty. Source: watched my sister-in-law who was by all accounts a normal, and amazing human being, legit be driven insane by Japanese society.
• seanmcdirmid 4y ago
  They aren’t really. Very few media is devoted to Japan in the west, this is just one article out of a sea of not much.
• bane 4y ago
  It's more or less been that way since the colonial powers first encountered Japan. European powers found Japan to be something of an outlier to other East Asian territories. Many early European accounts of Japan found the social order fascinating and often regarded as comparable with their home countries. Early British visitors wrote something like "Japan is one of the civilized nations of the world". These same powers had starkly different opinions on nearby Korea and China. Because of the Dutch port at Nagasaki, there was also a steady stream of Japanese goods into Europe and informed art, fashion, pottery, and other things. Europeans found analogs with their native stories of Kings and Knights, and the militarism of the colonial period was found and reflected by the Shogunate and Meiji governments. As Japan opened up, Europe found a country that had long been absorbing Western ideas in technology and medicine, but with an entirely different philosophical worldview -- challenging European cultural centrism that Western culture was the secret to its relative global power. By the mid 1800s Europe was so full of Japanese cultural influence that terms like "Japonism" were formed to reflect daily fashion trends that people wore on the street, and decorated their houses with. Van Gogh famously went through a period attempting to mimic Japanese art he found in news print and posters used to wrap pottery shipped from Japan. https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/stories/inspiration-from-japan https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/stories/inspiration-from-jap... At this point the West has a few hundred years of this kind of connection and reflection with Japan, and to be fully honest, Japan kind of finds the West as interesting as well. On a similar note, this cross cultural infatuation bothers my Korean wife to no end. But I have to remind her that we've really been dealing with her people en masse for under a hundred years, while we've been trading, teaching, learning, and fighting the Japanese for almost half of a millenia. It doesn't make her any happier ;)
  • wrp 4y ago
    > ...this cross cultural infatuation bothers my Korean wife to no end. I've had conversations with Koreans who look with envy at the favorable attention Japanese culture gets. I was many years with Japanese and now many with Koreans, so maybe my perspective is reasonably well informed. My theory is that the main reason is the Japanese focus on the presentation of things. I don't think any other culture in the world puts as much focus on making a good impression. When you come into contact with Japanese culture, the full force of it hits you immediately. Thus, I think it's exceptionally easy for people to be impressed despite very superficial acquaintance with the culture.
• odessacubbage 4y ago
  i think a big part of it is that they are an industrialized nation that seems to have modernized in a positive way and without losing all of their uniqueness in pursuit of becoming another utterly bland and inoffensive global commerce hub. i personally have a great deal of admiration for the japanese because they have managed to embrace & preserve their traditions and artisanship across centuries >https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WC1-sTIbDQc& https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WC1-sTIbDQc& while also leading the world technologically https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AiYirZPwIs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AiYirZPwIs and not to mention they are still building giant cool things, a style of monumentalism which the western world seems to have largely abandoned https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIucUB23zZ4& https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIucUB23zZ4&
• threadweaver34 4y ago
  It's that Japan is so advanced, but different. Most other countries are either less developed or similar to the west.